Virtual murder of your online social life is now an option, according to an article on npr.org.

“Web 2.0 Suicide Machine” allows you to totally destroy your virtual life if you would ever want to do so. Gordan Savicic told NPR that SuicideMachine.org allows users to get their actual lives back.

“The site is the work of a group of artists, designers and programmers based in the Netherlands who wanted to create a way to let people destroy their social networking accounts,” the article on NPR said.

“Basically, we try to remove as much content as possible,” Savicic said. “We change the profile picture and the password so you can’t log in anymore.”

Facebook posts and Twitter tweets are removed as thoroughly as possible by the organization. It has proved effective, especially since Facebook recently blocked the service on claims of violation of terms.

Undoubtedly, the idea of removing all Facebook content is horrific to many of us. The year 2010 finds most of us very entwined with our electronic devices and virtual communication. And while there’s nothing fundamentally wrong with this, a lot of problems are cropping up that need to be addressed in some way.

It is commonly known that most employers search on the internet either before or just after hiring someone new.

Honestly, I think that it is wrong to evaluate a person’s character in 2012 based on the fact that they once played strip poker in 2006. I also think that it is none of an employer’s business what their employees do during personal time; if Adam the accountant occasionally drinks too much with his fiancee on Saturday nights, how is that affecting his professional life? However, these judgments do happen and we need to protect ourselves against them.

In some cases, our Facebook or Twitter accounts may be too incriminating to just amp up the privacy options before graduation. As we all probably know, the increased protection offered by Facebook and Myspace still cannot guarantee total protection.

As painful as it may be, you should begin to re-evaluate the content of your social networking sites.

Download those pictures of you with 10 of your closest drunk friends and put them on a disc. Copy and paste your funniest quotes and most hilarious discussions into a Word document. Then, wipe it all out and start over.

Nobody says you can’t have a social networking site; in many careers, they can be a valuable tool for promoting yourself. However, there’s a difference between college-appropriate and professional-world appropriate. Leave out drunken pictures this time. Don’t talk about your job in wall posts or status updates, and add only people to whom you talk on a regular basis—not every person you vaguely remember from high school. As far as your careers are concerned, your best option may be to start from scratch on your professional image, at least where Facebook and Twitter are concerned.